Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines | Regulation | Statewide WV | West Virginia
Sen. Joe Manchin Struggles to Get MVP Permit Bill Passed by Dec. 31
According to insiders in the D.C. swamp, the deal that U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) made with Sen. Chuck Schumer (from New York) to get a “permitting reform” bill passed that would, among other things, allow the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), currently 94% built and in the ground, is on “life support.” The bill proposed by Manchin would bypass the clown judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals who are blocking it. The bill supposedly would allow MVP to finish and go online. However, Republicans are being falsely accused of blocking it.
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The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) released a notice of intent to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that will focus on the construction of a 32-inch buried pipeline under 3.5 miles of forest service land in the Jefferson National Forest. This is the third time around for the same permit. The first two EIS/permits were rejected by the clown judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. There’s no reason to believe the clowns will not reject it a third time, but Equitrans (the builder) and the USFS must go through the motions anyway.
On Friday, MDN reported that one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County (in Pennsylvania) that was leaking roughly 100 MMcf/d of gas had finally been plugged (see 
Investors in the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) continue to write down their investments in the long-delayed project. MVP, which is 95% done and in the ground, travels from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, where it connects with other pipelines to carry Marcellus/Utica molecules to the southeastern U.S. RGC Midstream, which is owned by RGC Resources, is a very small investor in the project. RGC said this week it is taking a further impairment (writing down value) for its investment in MVP.
Earlier this year, Equitrans Midstream announced it had filed a new pipeline expansion project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
EQT has sued its own (former) law firm, Baker Botts, and one of the partners at the firm, for allegedly giving the company bad advice with respect to the Hammerhead Pipeline gathering system owned by Equitrans Midstream (EQT’s former subsidiary). The lawsuit seeks at least $1 million in damages. Baker Botts is based in Texas, so the lawsuit was filed in the 61st District Court in Harris County, TX. Hammerhead is a $555 million, approximately 190-mile gathering system created by Equitrans to gather EQT’s production in southwest PA and haul it (64 miles) to Mobley, WV, where it will connect with the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and EQT’s Ohio Valley Connector pipeline (see 
Yesterday Equitrans Midstream, the builder and majority owner of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, issued its third quarter 2022 update. The big news (for us) was that Thomas F. Karam, CEO of Equitrans, said that if the 95% complete MVP is going to get finished, it’s probably going to take an act of Congress to do it. The same three clown judges (our words) of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals are signaling they will continue to block MVP, says Karam. In contrast to the clouds over MVP, yesterday’s update shared a bit of good news for a second Equitrans project.
The clown judges who occupy the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) appear ready to reject another water permit granted by the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection to cross streams and rivers and swamps to finish up the 94% complete Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Three judges from the 4th Circus were appointed back in 2017 to hear appeals against the project. All three are profoundly bigoted and prejudiced against natural gas pipeline projects.
This is, indeed, a sad day. Last Thursday, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC (MVP), which is majority owned by and is operated by Equitrans Midstream Corp., filed a notice to voluntarily dismiss eminent domain proceedings against landowner holdouts in North Carolina for land needed to build an extension of MVP into the state, called MVP Southgate. An Equitrans spokesman said the company hasn’t given up on the Southgate extension. We don’t believe it for a New York minute. We’ve seen this movie before when PennEast Pipeline canceled eminent domain, first in Pennsylvania (see 
So what happens now that Joe Manchin’s plan to get his fellow Democrats to vote for a bill to finish up the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a “permitting reform” bill, is dead (see 
We’ll say it right up front: We told you so. From the beginning, when U.S. Senator Joe Manchin announced he had sold out the country and would vote in favor of the horrible (misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act in return for a promise from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to pass a “permitting reform” bill that guarantees to finish the stalled (95% complete) Mountain Valley Pipeline, we told you it was a bad deal (see 
A small group of landowners in southwestern Virginia who have lost all of their previous attempts to block Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from crossing their property have made one last-ditch effort to fundamentally change the laws of the entire country to prevent this one pipeline. The landowners, obviously using Big Green money, have appealed their losing case to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the high court to hear their case against FERC’s (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) right to delegate its eminent domain power to a private pipeline company–in this case to MVP.